


Abraxos

by FlyawaySoul



Category: D&D - Fandom, D&D 5e - Fandom
Genre: Alzheimers, Backstory, Children, D&D, Deceased, Depression, Emotional, Family, Family resemblance, Gen, Home, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Character Death, Original Character(s), Party, Plot, Sadness, Wyverns, husband, son - Freeform, tragic backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:27:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21562963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyawaySoul/pseuds/FlyawaySoul
Summary: A short from Alaysia's (character from Friends in Low Places) father, on his daughter and her past family to an unnamed group:The inspiration for this scene was the idea that her father was drinking to her return and accidentally let slip something about her late family, intending it to be a compliment or just a fatherly comment. Unlikely as it is that he would still be with them, a good example would be that he comments that Lorkhan, if present, "has the same broadness about him that you used to love so much in men." It wouldn't be an outright mention of her family, they all know better than that, but something close enough to home that it would reasonably set her off in a related environment.





	Abraxos

Alaysia became all at once very still at her father’s words and a pained look seized her face. She turned wordlessly and all but ran to the large door of the dining room, throwing it open without even whistling Abraxos to follow. Her mother looked at her father with scarcely veiled fury, "Six hundred and thirty-seven years you've had to sharpen your wits and your tongue, all for them to become dull as riverstone the first time in half a century that our daughter has had the strength to return to us." 

The tall woman rose abruptly, her chair falling back with a violent crack as it tumbled to the floor. Alaysia's father sat for a long, silent moment, staring after the retreating forms of his daughter and now his wife through the jarred doors of the dining hall. He was visibly sorry for what he had done, but that would not stop the wells of pain he had elicited in his sweet babe's broken heart. The only thing that could truly heal the broken parts of her was the same thing that broke her, to begin with. Time.

"I do believe it is time to tell you all a story," the old Elf said suddenly, drawing the attention of the remaining guests. He rose deliberately and moved to one of the great bookcases in the room, pulling an ancient-looking tome from a shelf. Gently wiping away the dust from its spine, he regarded it sadly before continuing, "My daughter is not like her mother and me. She cannot live a life that is routine and be content, not as she is now. She needs, _survives on_ , distractions. My daughter suffers from the Great Sadness that plagues many of the elders of our kind. She is still little more than a child, yes, but such sometimes happens when we break the Unspoken Laws. She did something that we Elves are never meant to do." He opened the book gingerly, careful not to harm the yellowed old pages within. "My sweet, kind, precious fool of a daughter went and fell in love with a mortal man."

Alaysia's father regarded those that bothered to listen carefully, choosing his words with the same uncharacteristic care he used to turn the pages of the book in his hands, "You see, we bear bastards all the time, we Elves. It happens often enough that it is generally no shame, but we rarely raise them ourselves for a reason." He stopped flipping through the pages and looked down at the one he had landed on with distant eyes, seeing a time long forgotten by all else. With a sigh and a small, sad twist of his mouth, he laid the book out on the table for the others around him to see. 

It was a painting done in great detail of a younger Alaysia. The only thing that betrayed her younger age was that her features were softer than they had ever seen her. Without the weight of time, her eyes looked brighter and she had an expression of unfettered joy on her face. Most surprising of all was that she was not alone, but was peering up into the smiling brown eyes of a tall, strong Orcish man with that same look of joy on his face. In her arms was a young boy with the complexion of his father and he shared the glee of his parents as he regarded them with a startling replica of Alaysia's big, forest-green eyes.

"Oh, she was so happy, my little Alaysia. She doted on that boy unlike anything I have ever seen before or since. She was even worse than her mother, I swear. And that man. You'd have thought it had been him that had set the moons chasing one another across the sky, what with the way she talked about him.” He sighed and regarded the Orc in the picture, “He was a kind and honest man. He worked hard and he’d have pulled those same moons from the sky with his bare hands if it would have made her happy. In the end, however, he was no Elf," Alaysia's father frowned, "She was only a babe when this was done. A year or two past her twentieth decade, maybe. She was a wonderful, beautiful, thoughtless babe who had no business declaring that her love belonged to any man, let alone bearing him a child from it. Gods above and below, she was so young and naive and my poor babe didn't know it yet, but time does not give allowances to anyone. Not even those who are in love."

He flipped a few more pages to another portrait. Alaysia sat next to an older version of the Orcish man. She hadn't changed at all and their son stood behind them, a tall and broad man now in his own right. "Her lover began to grow old without her. He suffered the curse of time as his people are meant to, such is life, but my Alaysia had to watch every second,” The bard paused in his story, whether it be for effect or to gather his thoughts was unknown. 

“'Most people die in the span of an Elvish sigh,' we say, and my poor, poor daughter...She very nearly died of sorrow holding her breath for this man." He produced a pipe not dissimilar to the one Alaysia herself carried, lighting it in much the same way as well. He paused to take a long pull of the rich smoke for his thoughts before releasing it into the air to hang heavily with his words.

"There came a day when her lover could no longer walk the steps to their cabin without assistance. It was a sad day. Then there came a day when he could scarcely stand on his own. My Alaysia nursed him and cared for him as only someone who loves you from the bottom of their heart can," his face became drawn in thought, showing a startling resemblance to his daughter in the low light, "He fell one day while she was out to trade with the monastery down the way. She found him dead on the floor when she returned." Another long drag from the pipe, another thoughtful pause, and a release of smoke.

"She and her son were distraught. For weeks, the only people who could console them were each other. They were mired in sorrow, but they pulled one another through," he bit the pipe between his teeth and leaned forward to flip a few more pages, settling on perhaps the most heartbreaking yet. Alaysia stared up at them, seeming just as young as she had in the first painting but visibly harder far sadder now than in the previous images. She looked almost identical to the woman they knew today. 

Alaysia stood behind the chair of a weathered old man with wispy hair, her hands resting on his shoulders in affectionate contrast to the sorrow in her eyes. He had the complexion of her lover, but it was her eyes that gazed hazily from under his old, Orcish brow. "Time was not so kind to her the second time it took its toll." The old Elf took a shuddering breath and touched the face of his daughter's image. Something about him looked to be on the edge of tears. 

"Death is a natural, necessary thing. It is practical. Without it, life cannot sustain itself," he withdrew his hand from the image and rubbed his eyes wearily. He looked as though the tale had drained him. Perhaps it had. "However, death is also cruel. It does not care for what is left, it does not care why or how or when. It doesn't pay heed to wealth or wisdom and it robs us all of any dignity before it takes us. Death was particularly unkind to my daughter when it took her son, gentlemen. It did not take his body first, as it did her lover. No. It claimed her boy's mind more than a year before it stole his last breath. For over a year, her own _son_ could not comprehend his mother's face. He had no idea who he was, who she was, or even where he was.” 

“It was as though his memories became a reflection on a pool of water. He always would just seem to remember, to be coherent, and then the reflection would break. The water would agitate and ripple and the image of who he had been was gone. My Alaysia tortured herself at the shallow pool of water that had become her son like the old tale of Narcissus, loving something so immensely though it hadn't the capacity, by then at least, to ever love her back." Alaysia's father closed the book and his eyes. For a while, he did nothing but regard the pipe in his hands and occasionally draw breaths from the tiny coal of tobacco therein. 

"My daughter watched the two people that meant more to her than anything else in the world rot away like fallen trees. She loved them more than me, more than her mother, more than herself. She was never the same and I am almost certain she never will be. The closest she's come back to my happy, bright girl is when she's with that wyvern." He laughed mirthlessly and picked up the book, giving it a long last glance before sliding it back into its place, hiding just as much the physical evidence of the past as he did the memories it had left behind. 

"My daughter, she doesn't believe in fate. Even violently argues against its very existence if you push her enough. It's a common enough notion when you live long enough to see that 'fate' typically has a predictable enough pattern and can be easily manipulated by those with the power to do so. I didn't believe in it for a very, very long time either and I still wouldn't qualify what most would to be fate - but that wyvern, that was fate. I've never seen, heard, read about, or since been able to recreate anything like him. He is perfect for her. Everything she needs to keep enduring time, he provides for her. He gives her something to love, a purpose, the freedom to go where she pleases in search of whatever will distract her from the pain, the comfort of trusting something else. He gives her all of it without even the _ability_ to ask too much of her. He takes the empty parts of her and makes them whole again, or at least patches them enough to keep her going. He is her everything, but even that isn't actually why I call him an act of fate." 

The aged Elf sat down in a chair next to the hearth, moving as though his joints pained him though he looked no older than a young man. He began to clean his pipe, brushing the grime into the fireplace as he did. "He convinced me because of his color,” there was a firm, matter-of-fact set to the bard’s mouth as he continued, “That bland, easy-to-miss rock gray, like the stones our trees grow over here in the Vvardenfell." 

Alaysia's father regarded his pipe, and then his listeners. "Halsetaph, Abraxos's dam, and D'Lethi, his sire, are our oldest pair of mating wyverns. They breed true every _single_ time. They give us reds and they give us browns. They’ve given us a few albinos, even, but they haven't before or since produced a single offspring the color of that wyvern of my daughter's and we've been breeding them long enough that they're being retired after this last clutch. A _hundred and ninety-seven years_ those two have been at this farm, at least ten _dozen_ nestings with one another, and not once have they before or since produced a gray." He stilled in his chair and chuckled, but the humor was still long separated from the sound.

"Her boy, that precious little Orcish get of hers, my only legitimized grandchild to date. Her little baby boy's name came from our word for those hard gray stones that the trees grow over. The strength of those stones is the only thing that keeps them rooted securely enough to grow to the heights that they do," a single tear rolled down the Elf's sharp cheek, "His name was Abraxos, from our word abraixi, and he was the earth beneath my Alaysia's feet. Now a new stone has come into her life to support her roots and let her grow tall and strong again, but I fear with all the love that a father can muster that he, too, will fail her under the duress of time. My daughter cannot survive what she has again. Perhaps it makes me selfish, but I feel I am living through her pain myself. I fear that I am watching my only child waste away with time and it is a burden I would not wish on the worst of my foes."

Steepling his hands under his chin, the lithe old bard looked to those who bothered to weather his long tale. His eyes were Alaysia's, and so too was the pain within.

**Author's Note:**

> Her husband was an Orcish pirate once upon a time. He had long since recovered from scurvy, but the damage to his body had been done and it shortened his life. He also had issues with brittle bones later in life. Her son died of Alzheimer's, leaving Alaysia utterly distraught. She was nothing but a ghost of herself for decades after losing him and never really recovered.


End file.
